


Backmolt

by 1nsomnizac



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alien Biology, Gen, molting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 12:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9657677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1nsomnizac/pseuds/1nsomnizac
Summary: Karkat is injured during Act V and de-ages, and so he must spend his first few months on the meteor in a child-sized molt.





	1. Prolog

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by a post by CurliecueCal:  
> http://curlicuecal.tumblr.com/post/157078876130/friendly-reminder-that-de-aging-is-an-actual  
> "Friendly reminder that de-aging is an actual canonical thing real insects can do. Like, there are beetles that in conditions of stress and food scarcity molt back a development stage rather than into adulthood so they can persist more efficiently."

Yellow blood trickled down Sollux’s nose. Blond droplets were slowly drying in a ring of light around his head. His mouth hung open slackly, and the smallest sliver of eye was visible through his slack eyelids.

Feferi turned and snarled. Her binatrident materialized and she barreled towards him, bellowing in rage, her weapon facing forward. Eridan wrenched his gaze from the presumed corpse against the wall, eyes dilated, and raised his wand to shoot.

All of a sudden, a ghostly blue arm materialized in the air and smacked Eridan in the face. Eridan stumbled backward and tripped over his cape. His shot went wide. Feferi dove. The cone of white fire passed to the side of her head and singed her mane of curling hair.

Her trident’s point landed before she did. Its teeth pierced alternian cloth and alternian skin, and sunk through the purple flesh of Eridan’s left thigh and into the floor.

Eridan screamed. The pitch of the sound was shockingly high, the volume shockingly loud. Then Feferi’s weight landed on his abdomen, pushing the air out of his body with a wet wheeze like a gasping fish. Feferi’s fist connected to his temple, once, twice, three times.

Eridan’s body lay still, and there were two colors of blood on her fist. She panted, and raised her fist to punch him again, when she felt a firm hand holding her elbow.

“Feferi!” it was Kanaya. “Stop. There Is No Time.”

Feferi tried to shake her off.

“Feferi. Karkat Needs Us. He Is Badly Injured.”

Feferi snarled and turned toward Kanaya, hateful words on the tip of her tongue, when her eyes passed over Karkat. She paused, and her mouth went slack. Her arm fell to her side. “Oh no.” She climbed off of Eridan’s prone body and followed Kanaya to Karkat’s side.

Eridan’s stray blast had hit Karkat in the abdomen. A wide circle of his skin was scorched, and at the epicenter of the blast, his skin was gone, and the thin layer of fat beneath it was melted, and it gave off the reek of hot fryer grease. The scent was nearly lost amid the thick haze of blood in the room, but Feferi’s stomach still turned and protested.

Karkat was still alive. His lips moved in silent words, and his chest rose and fell with his breathing. His eyes were out of focus and half-lidded.

“Oh, Karkat,” whispered Feferi, “how are we going to get you out of this?”


	2. Molt

Karkat: Wake up.

You gradually become aware of a bright light. You try to turn around in your recooperacoon and go back to sleep, but two things stop you. The first is that you are not floating in slime, but lying on your back on something soft. The second is that you are surrounded by a familiar coat of senseless tissue.

Another molt already, you wonder. Something about that seems wrong, but you are already making the motions that come to you instinctively during the molting process, and your conscious thoughts will have to wait.

Your movement pulls at the dead shell along various joints and choke points, causing the stressed skin to rip apart. Your old face splits along the mouth, and your incessant motions widen the hole until it travels down your old neck and along your old shoulders.

The sensation from your arms and legs seems off, as if they no longer line up with their old joints, effectively preventing them from bending. You are thrashing wildly now, and you can dimly hear distorted voices outside the world of your molting. They will have to wait, too, because you need to get  _ out _ .

With a spectacular heave your encased body lurches to the side and dislodges your head and shoulders from the old molt. Squirming and kicking, you wiggle yourself out of your old skin.

You blink and crawl and pull yourself together. You are still on the meteor. You feel blurry, groggy, weak. You look down. Your hands are sinking into the cushiony surface of some sort of… concupescent platform? No, it is more like a human sleeping platform. You notice the color of the sheets is a cool purple, not the same as any of the blood colors.

Then you notice your hands. They look stubbier than you remember, and your claws--

Your claws are  _ wrong _ . They are pale and small for a 6-sweep old troll, smaller than they were before. You feel a sinking in your guts.  _ No, don’t tell me, _ you think, and put a hand to your lower abdomen. Since your last molt, that spot stuck out, so that your developing reproductive organs had room to grow to full size. You rub your hand back and forth below your tummy, but it is wriggler smooth.

It’s official, you’ve backmolted. Trolls occasionally de-aged when brought to near-starvation levels of fat loss, regressing until they had smaller bodies that they could feed on less. Like Pupa Pan’s lost boys, they would never grow up until they had enough food to molt again.

Then you realize this means you’ll have to go all the way through puberty again.

The meteor reverberates with your squeaky-voiced curse.


	3. Huntress

The hunt has gone on for a good many days, split between the inhabited levels and the uncharted foundations of the meteor, far from any warp pad, where neither the hunter nor her quarry could count upon light and heat.

However, the hunt is not impossible. The huntress has filled her sylladex with water, food, warm clothing, and a few sources of light, in addition to her weapons and her traps. Her quarry, however, has fled from his room with only the weapons, tools, and supplies he had from that terrible night months ago. They are not supplies for living on one’s own, and they are not supplies for small hands. The huntress found many things which her quarry abandoned, and captchalogued the useful ones among them.

Her nostrils flare; a scent pulls her back to the present. _Karkat’s scent?_ He is prepubescent again, so he no longer has any strong sebaceous odor. If he stopped leaving things behind, he might be able to evade you. But this smell! It is familiar.

The huntress follows her nose, moving through a dark hallway perpendicular to the way back to the others. Obscure shapes are piled against the walls, but there is a straight path down the center. Sound is coming from up ahead, distorted by the cavernous space.

Then suddenly, somewhere up ahead, a warbling sound like a distorted horn honk.

You freeze. _Gamzee_. He hasn’t shown up on your hunt, yet you saw what he wrote on That Night, and you know what he did to Tavros’s remains. You do not want him to know you are here alone.

_What about Karkat_ , you wonder. Then you think, _oh, crap!_

You can see Karkat in your mind’s eye, small and clumsy in his young body, unable to run from Gamzee’s long-legged stride with his immature limbs, unable to evade Gamzee’s clubs.

_No!_

You move forward again, slowly, carefully, but ceaselessly. You pick up the scent again. You turn to your left at a three-way intersection and find yourself in a wide room strewn with broken equipment. The dust in the room is not thick; this room has been inhabited frequently since the reckoning. There are two concentrations of scent, one near the far door, and the other in a near corner. The corner is occupied by a vaguely troll-shaped mass, unmoving, bent unnaturally, its back facing you. A torn black sweater covers its small torso.

Dread fills your heart, but you approach it anyway. The shape looks wrong, caved in like a rotten pumpkin. The molt is giving off an odor like rusty copper mixed with dandelion milk.

_Shit_ , you think and you grab the discarded husk. The material is as light and brittle as any, but you can feel a liquid weight shift inside it.

_This is bad. This is really bad_. You get out your portable and leave a message.

aC: Level B6, 3rd hallway, left at 1st cross hallway, left at 2nd cross hallway.  
aC: Karkat has molted prematurely; husk found with fluid inside.  
aC: I think that Gamzee is in the area, speed may be important. will report back when I have found him.

You stow your phone and approach the far door. There are drops of Karkat’s molt fluid on the floor around the far door, as if he stopped there, still dripping, before moving on.

The far door opens onto another narrow, maze-like hallway. The hall turns at a right angle a few meters to the left of the door, almost hidden beneath smashed up equipment. To your right, there are dozens of meters of clear, well-lit hallway, decorated with dry, flaking blood. You spend a second staring at a bloody **:o)** before taking the corner. Karkat might not have been awake when Gamzee snapped, but he surely recognized the danger of a symbol written in blood.

The clutter around the corner is thick and hard to navigate. It is about as dark as night in the Alternian forests that you once hunted in, but the foliage here is hard and cold, and far too loud, and goddamn it, you just want to get out of this place, you want Karkat out of this place, you want to call out to Karkat but you don’t want to confront Gamzee, who part of you still remembers as the dopey clown. You want--

**HONK.**

Fuck! Fuck! You stepped on a horn! And you know from experience just how far the acoustics in here will take that sound. You freeze up as the sound reverberates and fades, not moving a muscle, not even breathing, listening for some sign you were detected. It is only because your breath is caught in your throat that you notice the labored breathing coming from nearby.

“Karkat?” you whisper, but there is no reply. You take a step closer to the source of the sound. The breath hitches, and there is a shallow cough. And there, behind a fallen tower of computer parts and beside a broken light fixture, sits a very sick wiggler.

His eyes are puffy and half-closed, and a trail of reddish fluid falls from his nose to his mouth. His skin is almost shiny smooth, and looks soft, ( _too soft!_ ) and there are wide patches of skin missing, which were still attached to the old molt. He seems to be dressed only in a black sweater that reaches his knees, because his legs are bare and his feet are bloody. He is missing several nails and a lot of head hair.

“Karkat,” you whisper, “come on, let’s go back to the others.”

Karkat doesn’t answer. You put your hands near his middle, ready to draw back should he snap at you. When he doesn’t, you pick up his little body. He lurches once in your grip, and you nearly drop him, but you clutch him to your chest awkwardly. He goes slack in your arms, rattling out a wheeze that sounds a little like a sob.

You shift him to a more comfortable position, noticing the wet spots on your shirt where you pressed it against the parts of Karkat’s sweater that were saturated with his blood. Then, being careful to look out for any other underfoot horns, you start back towards home base.


	4. Cleaning

The so-called hospital is just a room that has a sink in it. You weren’t there when they lugged a human somnolence platform inside, but it’s much wider than the door, so they must have had a time trying to maneuver it into the room. You idly wonder if your moirail helped out.

The bed has white sheets and a violet blanket. Rose and Dave seem to think that sleeping in a cocoon is strange, but their “beds” are just cloth cocoons. You idly wonder if humans evolved from some sort of soft, hairy silkmoth.

You nod to Dave, who is already inside, wringing out a damp towel by the sink, then set Karkat on top of the sheets.

“Prop his head up on the pillow pile there,” Dave says, and you startle at his wording. The stack of pillows at the head of the platform sort of does resemble a pile. You quickly move him so that his head rests on the pillows and pull your hands back, glancing at the door and then at Dave.

Dave is facing you, but you have no idea what he’s thinking. You cannot read aggression in the tilt of his horns, you cannot really see whether his nostrils flare because they are pointed down, and he hides his eyes behind those sunglasses. 

But if Dave noticed anything unusual he gave no sign. He walked up to the side of the bed and, turning to Karkat, said, “you asleep, dude?”

Karkat doesn’t respond. Dave says, “aight man, I’m going to clean and dress your cuts and stuff, okay? I’d really love not to get mauled the instant I get close.”

Karkat still doesn’t respond. Dave says, “I guess he’s asleep. Let me know if I’m about to do something that violates social boundaries, okay?” He’s talking to you.

“Oh,” you say, “well, this whole sort of situation is kind of unusual. Most of the time trolls treat their own injuries. I don’t think I would let anyone but my meowrail treat my injuries.”

“Oh,” said Dave, “does he have a meowrail then?”

“Uh…” you say, “I don’t think so.”

“Okay, look, I do not know much about troll biology, but I do know that if a human kid had this many open wounds that were bleeding for this long, waiting for him to wake up and dress his own wounds would be a very bad idea.”

You nod.

“I’m gonna start cleaning him up now.”

You nod again.

Dave starts with Karkat’s left leg, moving the towel over his skin in steady, calm strokes. You watch as the drying blood that peppers his skin is swept away in sweeps. His legs seem less dark where the towel has been, save for little spots of dark capillary blood that stubbornly remain, cuts and shallow breaks in his soft skin. He gets to a spot, just below the inside of the knee, where about fourteen or fifteen square centimeters of skin had not detached from his discarded skin with the rest of his body. Dave pauses for a moment, then works his way around the edge, clearing the blood.

He shifts the towel in his hand to use a clean stretch of towel, and begins washing Karkat’s feet. He mumbles, “I always thought it was funny about the Hitchhiker’s, but damn if it wasn’t accurate.”

“Hitchhiker’s?” you ask.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Dave explains, “says that if you want to go bumming around space, you gotta know where your towel is.”

“Is it… serious?”

“What? No, it’s a comedic book. And a movie they made from it. And a wonky British thing from like, the eighties. I kind of liked that version for not going all hollywood with the story like the movie did, even though the effects made _Power Rangers_ look like _Star Wars_.”

You have trouble understanding what he’s talking about. He’s still talking, but the words are just sort of pouring out of his mouth and over your head. You try to find something to hold on to.

“What is it about? Besides towels.”

Dave stops for a moment, then says, “it’s about a British guy from Earth who has an adventure out in space with his friend, who’s an alien hitchhiker, and his ebook The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. It’s kind of funny because it was written back before ebooks were a real thing on Earth, so it treats the book as this cool piece of alien technology.”

He moves on to Karkat’s other leg. “It has this pretty funny set up, too. So this guy named Arthur starts of trying to stop a construction crew from demolishing his house.”

Even though you know the character is probably a human, you can’t help but picture your moirail’s lusus Aurthour attempting to prevent construction drones from breaking down Equius’ manor. It’s a slightly distressing image. Dave goes on, “the construction crew guy says ‘you should have gone to the government office and complained months ago’ but he didn’t know they were planning to wreck his house. Then a fleet of aliens surrounds the planet and says that they are going to destroy the Earth, and that they should have gone to the government office on a planet fifty light years away and complained years ago. But of course no one on Earth knew about any of it.”

“That doesn’t sound that funny,” you say.

Dave finishes cleaning around another skinless patch and says, “I’m not doing it justice. It’s the kind of humor that’s all in the delivery.”

Dave finishes cleaning the exposed parts of Karkat’s legs and goes to the sink. He does the trick where you get the water hot, stretch the towel out, and move it around under the faucet to break up the blood and let it pass through the fabric. When he finally wrings out the fabric, there are only a few discolored spots.

“You’re pretty good at this,” you say.

Dave shrugged. “I’ve got practice treating cuts.”

“Oh, are you your team’s healer?”

“Nah, but my bro would spar with me on the reg.” He starts wiping the blood from Karkat’s face. “He always used non-lethal attacks, but when you fight with swords, cutting is a thing that’s going to happen.”

You look at him, not sure how to process this. “Is that a normal thing,” you ask, “guardians swordfighting with kids?”

He shrugs, “most parents aren’t cool enough to train their kids to fight.”

“Maybe,” you say, “my lusus taught me how to hunt, how to track, how to carry a kill home. But I didn’t get cuts from Pounce’s claws.”

Dave shrugs again. “Help me get this sweater off.”

You get the feeling he doesn’t want to talk about this.

#####

The scabs that had been forming on his torso came off with his shirt, and Dave finished an entire tube of antiseptic ointment and started on a second before the bandaging was done. Karkat became sort-of conscious to hiss and squirm as the ointment went on, but didn’t fully wake up. Dave set a cup of water beside the bed, and said that he probably needs rest. Dave leaves the room, but you stay at the bedside, processing your feelings.

He really looks small right now, and that hits you in the chest. His face is different. It is rounder, and the proportions are different, less mature. But his six-sweep old face still shows through the neoteny.

You had a red crush on him, once. Do you still? It’s hard to say. When he was your peer in age you felt a sexual attraction. But the feelings you have when you see him like this are as far from sex as they can be. And there is something else as well.

Disappointment. A new barrier has come down between you and Karkat, a barrier that only he can take down. 

You leave the room with a heavy feeling in your gut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story's got a couple more chapters. Should be done in a few weeks. Thank you for your interest!


	5. Dextromethorphan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nepeta and Karkat returned during the first hour of the trolls’ sleep cycle. The coughing began late in that 'night'.

Nepeta and Karkat returned during the first hour of the trolls’ sleep cycle. The coughing began late in the “night”, as fit after truly awful fit of wracking coughs were expelled from Karkat’s lungs.

Over the course of several minutes you use the back of your hand to feel his temperature, find it very hot, realize you have no baseline to draw on, and find Dave to confirm that his temperature has risen since he returned. After waking and conferring with Nepeta, you return to the room with another blanket and a freshly alchemized bottle of troll cough syrup.

Karkat sees the bottle as you come in and immediately says “is that cherry flavored? Fuck no, I’m not drinking that swill. I’d rather be sick.” As if in response, another fit of coughs fills the room, followed by a low moan.

“How about some water, then?” you ask as you approach. You leave the lights off, but the open door let light in from the hallway. As you set down the folded blanket on the bed, Karkat says, “you’re one of the humans.”

You glance his way. His eyes are on you. “I am,” you say.

“Rose.”

“That’s right. Nice to meet you, Karkat.”

There is a sniffle. “Nice to meet you, too. Except I’m actually not feeling nice at all, and your presence doesn’t actually put a dent in that.”

“You have such a way with words, Karkat,” you say, taking the empty cup from the bedside to the sink. Karkat coughs again. This close, they sound even worse; congested, raspy hacking expels the air in his lungs as soon as he stops coughing long enough to pull air in. It makes you feel like a little bit of a jerk for the sarcastic comment. You fill his cup as quickly as you can and return to his bedside.

As soon as the fit dies off you hand him the cup. He drinks quickly, and the underside of his jaw expands and contracts with an ulp, ulp, ulp. When he comes up for air, you pick up the blanket and start unfolding it.

“I won’t ask you ‘are you sure you don’t want any medicine’,” you say, “because I always hated it when my mother did that. But let me know if you want me give you some, all right?”

Karkat coughs again, but this time the fit is short. “Fuck that,” he says. His voice is strained from all the work his windpipe has been doing, and it’s high like a human kid’s voice. A voice like a sick little kid saying ‘fuck that’ startles you before your memory of who you are actually talking to catches up.

“I wasn’t aware you felt so strongly about cough syrup. I can probably give you something else, if you’d like.”

“I said _fuck that_. I’m not some newborn barkfiend for you to pity. I am perfectly capable of--” Karkat breaks into a new fit of coughing. This time he seems to hold his mouth closed in order to quash them, but it fails, and he coughs some more as hard as ever.

“I do not pity you,” you lie when the fit is over, then, honestly, you say, “I am only doing what I would do for any friend who needed it.”

“Well I _don’t_ need it,” snaps Karkat, before erupting into coughs again. He groans and says, “I am _not_ helpless. I am _not_ that weak.”

“Do troll kids not get help when they are sick?” you ask.

“They do,” he says, “from their _lusus_ . Which _you_ are _not_. And I have never been so sick that I couldn’t pour my own cough prevention sludge. If I had, I might as well have called the culling drones myself.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, _why_? If your immune system is that weak, you’re not cut out for life.”

“That doesn’t follow,” you say, “if it makes you that weak and you survive, that means you won’t be brought down by it again.”

Karkat doesn’t look at you. You say, “haven’t you ever had another person take care of you?”

Karkat looks at you as if you’ve said something insane. He opens his mouth, about to speak, but a cough comes out instead, then another, then another, until he is hunched over and hacking. You get the urge to pat his back or stroke his forehead or something, but you resist it. When his lungs settle down, he rasps, “I keep forgetting about your weird alien shit. Your kind bear your own young, like beasts, and then become their lusus. I should have guessed you would be your friends’ lusus, too.”

You stand silently a moment, then say, “I suppose we _would_ seem like beasts to you. After all, I was surprised to hear that _your_ kind molt, like a crab, or an insect.”

He glares at you, and you return his gaze coolly. He sighs and says, “I guess I deserve that.”

He coughs again, only once this time. “Vriska used to kill people for her lusus,” he says. His voice is thin, scratchy. Hoarse. “She was not the only one. It is not smart to tell people that you are an easy target.”

“Well,” you say, “Vriska won’t hurt anyone anymore.”

Another single cough. “You underestimate her.”

“I doubt she can hurt you from beyond the grave,” you say, and Karkat freezes. _Shit_ , you think, _did he not know?_ Karkat’s lungs choose that moment to have another coughing fit. You stand there awkwardly until it passes, then Karkat says, “how did it happen?”

“I do not know the details, but apparently Terezi had to kill her so she wouldn’t go straight to Jack and give away your position.”

Karkat closes his eyes and sighs. “She hurt so many people, so many of my friends, but I’m still sad she’s gone. What must you humans think of us?”

You feel yourself smiling. “Believe it or not,” you say, “humans mourn people who have hurt them, as well.”

A trio of miserable coughs escape his lips. “Huh. Maybe we have more in common than I thought.”

You smile at that. “Maybe.”

“All right, Rose. if you want to so badly, I’ll accept a cup of that nasty cherry cough suppressant from you.”

“Glad to hear it,” you say, and pour a capful.

“Bluh!” he says, and downs the last of his water.

#####

As you leave the room, you notice the presence of someone in the hall. As you close the door you say, “hello, Nepeta.”

“Rose,” she says back. She pauses, then says, “you’ve mourned someone who hurt you?”

You raise your eyebrows. “I have. You were eavesdropping?”

“I was reconnoitering.”

“You aren’t in enemy territory.”

She smiles and shrugs. She has thick muscles on her shoulders, beneath her coat. You find your eyes drawn to the dark circles around her eyes where the skin looks softer and more pliable. You wonder if that part of their body molts as well, or if the empty husk is left with two gaping holes where eyes should be. She seems to be eyeing you as well. She says, “I hear that you humans don’t do caliginous romance.”

“It is not something I ever heard of, until I met all of you.”

“Hm,” she says, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t feel things other than flushed love, right? Feel other kinds of romance, that is.”

“I suppose not,” you say, “is there a reason you are trying to assess my emotional compatibility?”

She hesitates visibly, but you aren’t sure which emotion her face expresses. She says, “well, the way you talked to Karkitty sounded a lot like the way I talk to my moirail.”

Your eyebrows rise. “Are you suggesting that Karkat might have thought I was making a romantic overture?” You don’t really know how you feel about that.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Nepeta, “Karkat’s smart. He knows you didn’t intend that.

“But,” she says, stretching out the vowel, “if you do some soul searching, and find that you have pale feelings for him, that would be fine, too! He could use a good moirail, and I’d love to have some more friends to talk Moirallegiance with!”

You smile diplomatically, and try to come up with a response that conveys just how much that isn’t going to happen, but she’s already on her way down the corridor.

You stand there for a moment, watching her back recede, your head full of the feeling that your mind and hers are not the same in ways you can only guess at.

You have a feeling that it’s going to be a long three years.


	6. Wirklichkeit

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and everything around you is wrong.

You are lying in a bed. That is the first thing that’s wrong. Only weird aliens sleep on a cushioned platform.

Your head is propped up on a huge pillow pile, and that’s issue number two. Even though each pillow is a recognizable Alternian Imperial-Approved Pile Cushion™ Design 134, they are all slightly too big, and that is wrongness number three.

Feferi and Terezi stand on either side of your bed. They don’t look much different than you remember, but now your hind brain is telling you, ‘those are the big kids, don’t get too close to them, they’re dangerous’.

Feferi is talking, but her voice is different. Its bubbly quality had gone flat. That’s number five. You try to listen, but the words keep slipping away from you.

“What?” you ask.

“I said, we didn’t know how to do anything else, so we cut off the damaged tissue in your midsection and sewed you up as best we could.”

“Sewed?” you ask. Your brain is starting to work again, thank fuck.

“Well, that was mostly Kanaya. But the wound was really nasty. It burnt through a lot of your skin and melted the fatty stuff underneath. I had to cut holes to let that stuff drain out of you before it cooked your muscles.”

“It’s true,” inputs Terezi, “the computer room smelled like Karkat deep fry for days.”

You stare at her. She is smiling her customary trollish smile, ready to take a customary deluge of profanity-laden rage. When it doesn’t come, her smile falters. Shit. You need to rescue this situation. You smile and say, “I bet you were disappointed you couldn’t lick the plate.”

“Eeww!” Feferi says, and you laugh a little at her expense. Your laugh quickly devolves into hacking. When it ends you look up to see a pair of concerned faces.

“So,” you say. You are extremely aware of how prepubescent your voice is. “Vriska is dead.”

Terezi freezes up. Feferi glances at her and then back to you.

“Who else is dead?”

“Well, um, that’s a long story, really,” Feferi said, “what do you remember about that night?”

You close your eyes and try to recall the details. “Aradiabot exploded. And people were leaving the room. Even though I told them not to! And then Kanaya said something about the matriorb, and then…”

You try to remember, but the memory doesn’t come. It frustrates you, because you are pretty sure there was something else. You know, from context, that there was something else.

“Then I got burned, right?” you ask.

Feferi glances at Terezi, as if trying to communicate something without using words. Terezi doesn’t react to the gesture. She says, “well, I did say this a couple minutes ago, but Eridan shot you with his magic wand.”

You blink. Eridan? “What.” Eridan did this to you?

“He came in, and he was talking about joining Jack, and then he fought Sollux and knocked him out, and then I came at him and he shot at me, but he missed and hit you instead.”

“Wuh. What?” You can’t process things again. Feferi is speaking things that sound like words.

_Eridan betrayed me_ , you think, _he betrayed me_. It hits you in the gut.

“Why?” you say, “damn it, why? Why, why, why, why, why! How could he do this to me? Why did he do this to me!?” You realize your screeching like a wiggler having a temper tantrum but you can’t seem to hold it in.

Something is wrong. You are a six sweep old troll. Trolls have betrayed you before. You have the experience to deal with it better than this. Even the humiliating result of the betrayal, which _should_ bother you, doesn’t hurt so viciously or so deeply as the betrayal itself.

You can feel big fat wiggler tears coming on. You maintain enough control to tell the girls to leave. They accept to easily. They can tell that you need to cry, and they are letting you save face out of pity. But somehow, now that they are gone, you feel worse.

Big fat wiggler tears come as predicted, straining your tear ducts and turning your view into a red-tinted kaleidoscope. You feel the way you did when something bad happened while your lusus was away, like something is missing, and you cannot feel better until it returns.

Eventually, you fall asleep.

#####

Sometime later, you wake up coughing. Your throat is sore and feels dry and raw, despite the phlegm. You cough and cough, until all the gross gunk is in a bedside trash can, but still you cough. It starts to hurt to cough, but you can’t stop.

You look around for the cough medicine and see it on the bedside table, where Lalonde set it down. The water cup beside it is empty. You look at it wistfully, and think to yourself that there may be something to the way humans treat each other as you fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, I should have a new chapter out in the near future, let's say this week. I am glad that you all are interested!


	7. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it keeps taking me so long, guys! I had something earlier, but it did not satisfy me, so I had to rewrite it. But this chapter is nice and long, at least compared to some of the others in this story, so if you didn't like the wait, at least you get more this time. Thanks for reading!

Interlude: Two Weeks Ago

In, out. Karkat breathed. One, two. Kanaya worked. One two, the needle dived and bobbed. A familiar rhythm. Again, the grey needle pierced tough grey hide. Again, it slid out of red-pink flesh. Again, it entered exposed hypodermis. Again, it exited damaged epidermis. Again, deft fingers pulled the needle free, pulled the surgical thread, and drew that section of the wound closed. Again and again. In, out.

She fought to keep her movements precise. The segmented and keratinous trollhide had resisted the blast and saved Karkat’s intestines because it was tough, but now it resisted her efforts to sew up gaps for the same reason.

Sweat had broken out along her scalp, around her grub scars, on her subocular pouches at her elbow and armpit joints; there were no sweat glands on her forehead or palms that would interfere with her work.

She struggled to ignore the smell. She had inflicted most of the cuts that she was suturing, in order to clear out lines of subcutaneous fat that had liquefied in the blast, and clear out tissue that had died from being practically deep fried. The area around Karkat was littered with scorched skin and fried troll, and the associated scents were still thick around his body. Some of the fat had dripped into the cracks in the floor and congealed, where its scent lingered with its companion, the scent of burnt dermal keratin. But it was hard to bear.

She thought, _I should have prepared a more sanitary environment_. It was not a question of whether she could carry him somewhere else, but whether doing so would put strain on his wounds and undo the work she had already done.

Feferi was away, finding a guard for her unconscious matesprit and a cell for her prisoner. She glanced at the binatrident firmly embedded in the floor plates, and the pulpy, violet-oozing severed limb it skewered.

Kanaya’s memory seemed to come in small clips and snapshots. Sollux hitting the wall. Feferi baring her fangs. Eridan pointing the wand Kanaya gave him at Feferi, the glare of his glasses obscuring his eyes. The blue shape that appeared out of nowhere, hitting Eridan in the face. The white filling her vision as Eridan’s shot flew past her. The confusion of its passing, and the sounds of bodies hitting the floor.

She turned back to her work. Blood was clotting on raw parts of his skin, an interestingly dark red, in contrast to the brightness of his blood. Something about it tugged at her, kept her from diving back into the rhythm.

_He will not be grateful_ , Kanaya realized, _he will hate that I saw his blood._

She looked at his face, a face she had known for a long time, a face she had just spent a lot of time around, a face of a person she respected.

_But it seems our relationship was only skin deep._

Realizations came in waves. _I’m witnessing a secret that my friend thought he could never show anyone_ . _Even me. He thought that there was a chance that I would kill him if I ever found out. That anyone he ever cared about would kill him if they found out_.

He had told her, before, during the game, but she had never really thought too hard about it. They had a mission to complete, a reward to win, and she stuck to considering only immediate consequences. But now the fact was in her face, literally filling her head, as the intriguing scent of blood permeated her sinuses.

_I wonder if the human boys keep things like this from Rose,_ she thought. She mulled it over as she started a new stitch. She hadn’t conversed long with either male, but they both managed to frustrate her with misdirection or insincere bullshit, so Kanaya tended to think they would. _But blood was universal on Earth_ , Kanaya remembered, _so what would they keep from her?_

She pushed the needle into red-pink flesh, and out grey skin. Her forefinger and thumb were wet with Karkat’s blood, not brightly arterial, but still brighter than the darkness of burgundy wounds.

_Bright, red blood…_

Kanaya blinked, aware that she had zoned out for a time. She pulled on the stitch thread, drawing the ragged flesh closer. She felt the skin resist strongly this time. Her intuition told her that any further stitches would not close. Most of the remaining damage was shallow, with some layers of skin remaining. His skin would be scarred and thin until his next molt, but she did not have the troll-specific medical tools that could do any more.

She opened her sylladex and located her extra bandages. She was about halfway through sealing Karkat’s wound when she heard and felt the telltale displacement of air that occurred whenever someone appeared on the transportalizer. Kanaya half turned toward the pad before turning back to her work. “Is that you, Feferi?”

No response came. She pulled the bandaging fabric taut and held it down with one hand, then turned around to see who it was. The transportalizer was clear, and she couldn’t see another soul in the room.

Kanaya frowned. She could feel her hackles rise. _My imagination doesn’t run that wild_ , she thought, _I definitely felt something_.

Seconds passed. Kanaya scanned the room, her lipstick in one hand. _Have we been spotted?_

Nothing materialized. Kanaya exhaled, forcing out a breath that she had not realized that she had been holding. _Just a draft_ , she thought.

She turned back to Karkat and pinned his bandages in place. _I guess this shook me up more than I realized_ , she mused, _if I’m jumping at a simple puff of wind_.

But something about that thought turned around and around in her head. _A puff of wind_ , it echoed. She made to get up off the floor.

_A puff of wind from where?_

She stopped short halfway through standing, then slowly, deliberately followed though. The meteor was surrounded by vacuum, and there were no windows in the room. There were no doors, only a pair of air vents, one by the floor, the other by the ceiling, and the transportalizer pad, connected the room to the rest of the universe. She turned to face the room.

The transportalizer was still empty, but it was not clear. A small crescent of brown lay on the pad. She stepped closer. It was part of a shoeprint, she realized. Someone had stepped in something brown.

Out came the chainsaw. _The smartest thing to do_ , she thought, _would be to retreat to a position of strength and call for backup. But if I retreat, I leave Karkat defenseless. In order to carry him out of here, I need to put him over my shoulder. Getting him there will require two hands, leaving me open to attack by this invisible intruder. Of course, since I can’t tell where it is, I might be leaving myself open to attack right now…_

Kanaya turned slowly, sweeping the room, keeping her chainsaw above Karkat’s prone body. _I’ll have to wait for Feferi here…_ she thought of Rose’s scouter and felt a spike of regret for not making one when she made Eridan his shitty wand.

She felt another disturbance in the air and whipped toward its source, only to stop short. It was Gamzee. He was standing on the transportalizer, looking around the room. His eyes were not drooping and half-lidded as they normally were, but wide and alert as he looked at the wrack and ruin on display.

“Gamzee,” Kanaya said, “it’s good you’re here. I need your help.”

Gamzee looked at her. His eyelids fell again, but they were still unusually alert, at least for him.

“That’s funny,” he said. His voice reverberated with a strange quality. “THAT’S REAL FUCKIN’ FUNNY, CHAINSAW CHICA."

Kanaya opened her mouth in startlement. His voice seemed to shout, but at the same time the volume was restrained.

“It looks like you helped yourself,” he said. It sounded like a whisper, yet it projected clearly through the air.

‘IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’VE BEEN MOTHERFUCKIN’ SAWING AWAY IN HERE,” he went on, “helping yourself while I was up and gone.”

Kanaya blinked. “Gamzee,” she asked, “what are you on right now? Anyway, listen. Eridan went rogue. He beat Sollux and attacked Feferi, and Karkat got caught in the crossfire. All I did was cut his leg off when we couldn’t get Feferi’s trident out of the floor plates.”

“EVERY INCH THE PIRATE NOW, ISN’T HE?” Gamzee said, “and here I thought you had no mirthfulness up in ya at all.”

He ambled over to the place where the binatrident stood, a couple of degrees from perpendicular with the floor. He wiggled the central tine back and forth, as far as it would go, not very far.

“What _are_ you on, Gamzee?” Kanaya asked.

“NOT ONE MOTHERFUCKIN’ THING,” he said, looking back at her. She could feel intensity radiating from his glare. “It rots you, you know. ROTS THE THOUGHTS COOKIN IN YOUR THINK PAN. Rots them away. UNTIL THE COLORS ARE ALL MIXED UP.”

“All right, Gamzee,” Kanaya said. _This is some sort of withdrawal reaction, I bet_ , she thought. _I better get not waste any time._

“Gamzee, there’s something else here in this room with us. I need to move Karkat to a safe location.”

“Sure thing, sister,” he said, “I’LL WATCH YOUR BACK.”

“Thank you,” Kanaya said, and bent down. She had one hand behind Karkat’s neck and another under his lower back when she felt the air move behind her again.

“Don’t mention it, sister,” Gamzee whispered in her ear.

She couldn’t feel the blade until it had already come out her front. When she did, she sucked in air to scream, but something was wrong. She could feel fluid moving in her body, felt like retching. _Fuck_ , she thought, _I’m drowning in my own blood_.

She tried to turn, succeeded. Up close, his face was horrifying. The painted mouth and eyes deformed his face, turning him into some sort of monster.

Why, she mouthed. She couldn’t make air move out of her lungs.

“BECAUSE YOU NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON A MOTHERFUCKIN’ SUBJUGGLATOR, BITCH.”

Her vision was darkening. The mirthful face moved up and down with words out a childhood horror. Panic, confusion, and despair swirled thoughtlessly around in her head as the world receded into blackness.

_Shit_.

#####

Thirst wakes you up in the middle of your sleeping shift. You get out of your ‘coon, and ease the door open. There’s light, there’s always light. The bulbs flicker here and there, annoying over long periods, but no one stays in the halls.

Neither do you. You move quickly through the halls until you reach Feferi’s suite. Behind that door was a short anteroom. On one side, a medical observation room with an attached ablutionblock, where Feferi has set up her recuperacoon. At the far end, another door. You unlock the suite and step inside.

You can see that Feferi is asleep through the observation window in the antechamber. You lock the entrance behind you and open the far door. The stairwell on the other side goes down and down. You make your way down at a clip. There are no lights, but your body glows in the darkness.

That’s probably why he’s ready for you when you reach the door at the bottom of the stairs. He grabs your leg from the floor beside the door as you come in, trying to trip you to the ground. You stomp his hand for the effort. He whimpers and curls up. He breaks easily, nowadays.

You grab a wrist and hoist his arm up, none too gently. He yelps and begs for you to stop, but he knows you won’t. And you don’t. For the third time this month, your fangs sink into his arm, and your mouth begins to fill with salty violet blood.

When you return to Feferi’s suite, you see that she is up and about you wave through the glass, and she waves back. It’s an awkward sort of moment, and you don’t stop to chat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have paused work on this fic while I work on a different project. I plan to resume work on it in October, 2018, and I will have at least one chapter out by Halloween. This is one of my favorite stories to work on, but real life has been a major thing this year, if you take my meaning. 
> 
> I am so happy that people have enjoyed what I've written so far. I am very interested to hear what you all think, so I urge you to leave a comment here. Tell me what you liked, tell me what you didn't like, share your hopes and your fears, your comparisons and your critiques.
> 
> Ever your humble writer  
> ~ 1nsomnizac


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